Movie Theater Marquees: Alien (1979)

The first photo shows the Alien premiere at the Criterion Theater, New York, 1979. The second two are of the premiere at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

The showing at the Egyptian was special. Many of the props, models, and even parts of the set were on display. After you stood in line for an hour or two, you got to walk through a corridor of the Nostromo to get into the lobby, and in the courtyard sat Giger’s massive “Space Jockey.” The masterpiece was promptly vandalized and had to be removed (note the hand touching it in the photo).

All of the pics below are from Lisa Morgan, who unearthed them a few years ago.

Actually, I heard the Space Jockey was set ablaze by some religious nutjobs, who thought it was the “work of Satan,” and that it happened between shows, so the people who got to admire it on the way in came out to see firemen hosing down a charred circle on the ground.